The present invention relates to network virtualization, and more specifically, to the protection of interpreted source code in virtual appliances.
Interpreted programming languages may offer rapid prototyping and development of code. It may be desirable to utilize these types of programming languages as third party open source APIs can be used to rapidly extend functionality to these programming platforms. Due to the interpreted nature of this programming type, it may be easy to maintain compliance with open source licensing such as a Lesser General Public License (LGPL) as code added to these platforms is not statically linked. For example, code associated with one LGPL may be added to in the open source environment, thus potentially rendering the LGPL obsolete or void. Moreover, the source code in interpreted programming languages is fully exposed. This means that anyone who can access the file system may access the source code. This may make it very difficult to utilize and protect proprietary code employed in interpreted programming languages. Thus, protecting the interpreted code in virtual appliances may be desirable.